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I strongly dislike when people say AI when they actually mean optimizer. Calling the product of an optimizer “AI” is more defensible, you optimized an MLP and n
by valine 2y ago
I strongly dislike when people say AI when they actually mean optimizer. Calling the product of an optimizer “AI” is more defensible, you optimized an MLP and now it writes poetry. Fine. Is the chip itself the AI here? That’s the product of the optimizer. Or is it the 200 lines of code that defines a reward and iterates the traces?
- trollbridge 2y agoIf you want grant and VC dollars, you’ll rebrand things as “AI”.
- latexr 2y agoSee also: Iced tea company rebranded to include “blockchain” in name, and stocks jumped. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/long-island-iced-tea-micro-cap-adds-blockchain-to-name-and-stock-soars.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/long-island-iced-tea-micro-c...
- scotty79 2y agoThe chip is not called AI-chip but rather AI-designed chip. At least in the title.
- valine 2y agoMy point is that it’s equally ridiculous to call either AI. If our chip here is not the AI then the AI has to be the optimizer. By extension that means AdamW is more of an AI than ChatGPT.
- ulonglongman 2y agoI don't understand. I learnt about optimizers, and genetic algorithms in my AI courses. There are lots of different things we call AI, from classical AI (algorithms for discrete and continuous search, planning, sat, Bayesian stuff, decision trees, etc.) to more contemporary deep learning, transformers, genAI etc. AI is a very very broad category of topics.
- valine 2y agoOptimization can be a tool used in the creation of AI. I'm taking issue with people who say their optimizer is an AI. We don't need to personify every technology that can be used to automate complex tasks. All that does is further dilute an already overloaded term.
- kadoban 2y agoIt's not "an AI", it's AI as in artificial intelligence, the study of making machines do things that humans do. A fairly simple set of if statements is AI (an "expert system" specifically). AI is _not_ just talking movie robots.
- Dylan16807 2y agoYou can remove the word 'an' if you're attributing some weird meaning to it, the point is still valid. Genetic algorithms and optimizers are usually in there to make AI algorithms, they aren't themselves AI algorithms. And you have to be doing something rather specific with a pile of if statements for it to count as an expert system.
- layer8 2y agoI agree that the article is wrong in using the wording “the AI”. However, firstly the original publication [0] doesn’t mention AI at all, only deep-learning models, and neither do any of the quotes in the article. Secondly, it is customary to categorize the technology resulting from AI research as AI — just not as “an AI”. The former does not imply any personification. You can have algorithms that exhibit intelligence without them constituting any kind of personal identity. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54178-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54178-1
- soulofmischief 2y agoWho said it was 'an AI'? Do you understand what intelligence means? And what artificial means?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rowanG077 2y agoI don't understand what your gripe is. Both are AI. Even rudimentary decision trees are AI.
- valine 2y agoLets just call every turning complete system AI and be done with it.
- coderenegade 2y agoThere's no function here that is analogous to a decision tree, or a parametrized model, just an optimizer and a loss function with a simulator. This isn't AI in the way it's commonly understood, which is the function that takes an input and produces a learned output.
- kadoban 2y agoThe entire point of the thing is that it takes an input and produces an output. The output is the designed chip.
- coderenegade 2y agoAn optimizer produces a single optimized set of parameters. AI is a (usually parametrized) function mapping a collection of input states to a collection of output states. The function is the AI, not the optimizer. I'd suggest anyone who thinks otherwise go and do some basic reading.
- saltcured 2y agoArtificial intelligence, as others are using it here to cover a broad field of study or set of techniques. You seem to be objecting because the described product is not "an artificial intelligence", i.e. an artificial mind. For some of us, your objection sounds as silly as if we were to tell some student they didn't use algebra, because what they wrote down isn't "an algebra".
- coderenegade 2y agoYou use optimization to train AI, but we usually refer to AI as being the parametrized function approximator that is optimized to fit the data, not the optimizer or loss function themselves. This is "just" an optimizer being used in conjunction with a simulation, which we've been doing for a long, long time. It's cool, but it's not AI.
- jjk166 2y agoYou use teachers to train humans, but that doesn't mean teachers can't also be humans.
- coderenegade 2y agoThis is totally irrelevant. Optimization is a branch of mathematics concerned with optimization techniques, and the analysis and quality of possible solutions. An optimizer is an algorithm concerned with finding optima of functions. You don't get to rewrite decades of mathematical literature because it gives you AI vibes. Yeah, you need an optimizer to train AI, but it's not the AI part. Most people would refer to and understand AI as being the thing they interact with. You can't interact with an optimizer, but you can interact with the function that is being optimized. I'm honestly stunned that this is even a controversial position.
- saltcured 2y agoFWIW, I suspect there are more folks here with exposure to decades of computer science literature about AI than to comparable mathematics literature. The CS literature has used AI to refer to nearly any advanced search algorithm, e.g. during the prior AI boom and bust cycle around symbolic AI. In this literature, it is idiomatic that AI techniques are the broad category of search and optimization techniques. There wasn't necessarily any "training" involved, as machine learning was considered part of the AI topic area but not its entirety.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoYes. It's the optimizer here that's called "AI" because AIs are optimizers - and so are humans. It's a matter of sophistication.
- catlifeonmars 2y agoYesterday I used a novel AI technology known as “llvm” to remove dead code paths from my compiled programs.
- selcuka 2y ago> known as “llvm” to remove dead code paths Large Language Vulture Model?
- FergusArgyll 2y agoAt the risk of responding to obvious satire... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLVM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLVM Released approx 20 years before ASGSI (Artificial Super General Super Intelligence)
- smj-edison 2y agoAt the risk of responding to obvious satire... Isn't ASGSI just a marketing term, while ASSGSI is the one as smart as a human?
- sph 2y agoSay no more. Here's $100 million to take this product to market.
- fweimer 2y agoYou may find it funny, but it's unclear if profile-guided optimization is permitted under typical corporate AI policies.
- LPisGood 2y agoOptimization is near and dear to my heart (see username), but I think it’s fine to call optimization processes AI because they are in the classical sense.
- ragebol 2y agoOnce a computer can do something, it no longer called AI but just an algorithm. At least, that used to be the case before the current AI summer and hype.
- whatshisface 2y agoOnce a computer can do something, it's just an algorithm. LLMs can't really do anything right, so they're AI. ;)
- Dylan16807 2y agoIf you have an agent in an environment, the program that controls its choices has pretty consistently been called AI even when it's a simple design. But I'm skeptical of calling most optimizers AI.
- ragebol 2y agoBack in the days when something like A* was invented, I' fairly sure it was called AI. Now it's just another algorithm. So indeed, we don't call those 'AI" anymore. The bar has significantly shifted and does so each time a big advance is made. Perhaps one day we'll understand what goes on in our brains to the same extent.
- Dylan16807 2y agoThe bar has shifted a bit, but I don't think it has shifted all that much. I would not say the bar is moving along with "things computers can do".
- rollcat 2y ago> [...] the classical sense. Which one? Fuzzy logic, ANNs, symbol processing, expert systems, ...? It's always entertaining to watch the hype cycles. Hopefully this one will have a net positive impact on society.
- satvikpendem 2y agoSigh, another day, another post I must copy paste my bookmarked Wikipedia entry for: > "The AI effect" refers to a phenomenon where either the definition of AI or the concept of intelligence is adjusted to exclude capabilities that AI systems have mastered. This often manifests as tasks that AI can now perform successfully no longer being considered part of AI, or as the notion of intelligence itself being redefined to exclude AI achievements.[4][2][1] Edward Geist credits John McCarthy for coining the term "AI effect" to describe this phenomenon.[4] > McCorduck calls it an "odd paradox" that "practical AI successes, computational programs that actually achieved intelligent behavior were soon assimilated into whatever application domain they were found to be useful in, and became silent partners alongside other problem-solving approaches, which left AI researchers to deal only with the 'failures', the tough nuts that couldn't yet be cracked."[5] It is an example of moving the goalposts.[6] > Tesler's Theorem is: > AI is whatever hasn't been done yet. > — Larry Tesler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect
- taberiand 2y agoWe'll never build true AI, just reach some point where we prove humans aren't really all that intelligent either
- AlienRobot 2y agoAI is when Einstein is your butler.
- fc417fc802 2y ago> It is an example of moving the goalposts. On the contrary. The "AI effect" is an example of attempting to hold others to goalposts that they never agreed to in the first place. Instead of saying "this is AI and if you don't agree then you're shifting the goalposts" instead try asking others "what future developments would you consider to be AI" and see what sort of answers you get.
- jjk166 2y agoPeople did ask that, and they got back answers like "beating grandmasters at chess" and "being able to hold a conversation with a human," but no one considers chess engines or chatbots to be AI anymore because the goal posts were moved.
- selcuka 2y ago> I strongly dislike when people say AI when they actually mean optimizer. It probably uses a relatively simple hill climbing algorithm, but I would agree that it could still be classified as machine learning. AI is just the new, hip term for ML.
- edanm 2y agoWhat? Quite the opposite. AI is the original and broader term, ML is a subset of AI. Deep Learning was the "hot" terminology around 2015-2018, and since 2022/Chatgpt, LLM has become the trendy word. Yes, people now talk about "AI" as well, but that term has always been there, and anytime some AI technique becomes talked about, the term AI gets thrown around a lot too. (Note - I may have misunderstood your meaning btw, if so apologies!)
- AlienRobot 2y agoIs there anything we can even call AI that would be correct?
- ssivark 2y agoAI is such an ill-defined word that it's very hard to say what it's definitely not. Marvin Minsky -- father of classical AI -- pointed out that intelligence is a "suitcase word" [1] which can be stuffed with many different meanings. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/530282a https://www.nature.com/articles/530282a
- zelphirkalt 2y agoI think it is as follows: We call it AI nowadays as long as we cannot clearly easily show how to get to the result, which means the computer did something that seems intelligent to us for the moment. Once we can explain things and write down a concise algorithm, we hesitate to call it AI. Basically, we call things AI, that we are too stupid to understand.
- azinman2 2y agoI think what’s really happened is we get output that’s close enough to normal communications to “feel” human. I could say it’s all a giant trick, which it kind of is, but we’ve also gotten to the point where the trick it also useful for many things that previously didn’t have a good solution.
- xen2xen1 2y agoMarketing is as marketing does.
- parsimo2010 2y agoThe "OG" AI research, like the the era of Minsky's AI Lab at MIT in the 1970s, broke AI into a few sub-domains, of which optimization was one. So long before we used the term AI to describe an LLM-based chat bot, we used it to describe optimization algorithms like genetic algorithms, random forests, support vector machines, etc.
- immibis 2y agoThings used to stop being called AI once they worked well, because AI was artificial human thought and those things weren't that. Now they start being called AI, because AI is artificial human thought and those things are that. What changed? Our perception of the meaning of "thought".
- maxov 2y agoLooking at the actual article (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54178-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54178-1), their procedure does actually use deep learning in the process of synthesizing candidate chip designs, and the use of deep learning is key to their work. In particular, it looks like the final process is a genetic algorithm that interacts with a deep learning model that predicts the performance of candidate chips. It seems like trying to simulate the chip analytically to predict performance was far too inefficient, and replacing that part with a deep learning model made this entire procedure possible. So in summary, nothing in this article is called AI that has not been called AI before. Most importantly it produces novel designs "globally" without a human in the loop whereas one was required before. I think calling that AI-designed is pretty reasonable. On a very high level, the role of deep learning here seems similar to AlphaGo (which is also the combination of a less novel generic optimization algorithm, Monte Carlo tree search, with deep learning-provided predictions). I don't think anyone would debate that AlphaGo is fundamentally an AI system. Maybe if we are to be really precise, both of these systems are optimization guided by heuristics provided by deep learning.